


Wanna Fly To A Place, Where It's Just You And Me

by happycookiie



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awkward Kissing, Bisexual Character, Character Death Fix, Confusion over Sexuality, F/F, F/M, Femslash, Fix-It, Fluid Sexuality, Friendship, Lesbian Character, Love Triangle (Implied), Male-Female Friendship, Romance, Romantic Tension, Sexual Tension, Sexuality Crisis, Tareth - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-25
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 05:59:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7302277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/happycookiie/pseuds/happycookiie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beth doesn't die that day. She walks out of those hospital doors and lives, but instead of the only problems being fighting for her life against walkers and people like she thought, now she's struggling with her sexuality and her identity. As well as her growing attraction and feelings for Tara, and the familiarity and comfort she finds in Daryl.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wanna Fly To A Place, Where It's Just You And Me

**Author's Note:**

> "I keep asking myself,  
> Wondering how.  
> I keep closing my eyes but I can't block you out.  
> Want to fly to a place,  
> Where it's just you and me.  
> Nobody else, so we can be free."
> 
> (All The Things She Said by t.A.T.u)

She doesn't understand what's going on.

Well, obviously she _does_. Sort of. She's not stupid, but there's a lot about it that she _doesn't_ understand, and she doesn't understand why she's doing it in the first place. The first time it happens, it's confusing. They only walked out of the Grady hospital a couple of weeks ago, and they've not really gotten to know each other all that well. They're still sort of strangers, thrown together just like her and the rest of Rick's group after the fall of the farm, close-knit but not actually knowing much about one another at all.

Beth's set to go out on a run with Daryl and Michonne, when Tara volunteers to come along last minute. Beth doesn't think all that much of it because frankly: why would she? So they go, and it's fine for the majority of the trip.

Until they run into trouble.

They get ambushed by a pretty sizeable cluster of walkers, and it's that ambush that gets them separated. Daryl and Michonne are forced off down one end of the department store they're raiding, pushing Beth and Tara into the back lobby part where they can barricade the tough double doors. There's no windows to escape through—oddly—and the fire exit is blocked by something on the other side of the door, so for the time being… They're stuck there.

With the door decently barricaded and keeping as quiet as they possibly can, the walkers eventually stop bashing against the doors, and return to loitering around in their vacant groaning state, still blocking the way out. Beth's sat on the ground against the counter, knees pulled up to her chest and knife clutched tight in her hand, when Tara comes over and sits down next to her. She doesn't think much of it at the time, but then again she _never_ thought about those kind of things.

It's cold in the lobby, a chill air somehow blowing in from under the gap in the doors and sending shivers up Beth's arms. Tara notices her subtle shudders and slowly, cautiously, shifts the arm that's nearest Beth.

She moves it carefully, gently snaking through the space between the counter and Beth's back, and rests it lightly around Beth's waist.

She doesn't say anything. Neither does Beth, because again she doesn't think anything of it. They're probably both cold and this is a way of trying to seek some warmth. Simple. Perfectly justifiable and normal.

…Until it starts to _not_ be.

At some point while they're sat there, drinking in the otherwise silence if not for the coarse rasps of walkers opposite the double doors several feet away, Beth turns her head. Just slightly, a very subtle move that could honestly go unnoticed, but then Tara turns her head too.

There's a pause.

For reasons unknown, Beth's heart jolts forward in her ribcage like a dummy in a crash, and she knows it must be reflected in her eyes because Tara's eyes grow wide for a second, so she tries to rapidly blink it away. She's too late though, because Tara's eyes shrink back to their usual size, but there's something gleaming in the deep fiery brown. A gleeful glint of mischief; of _daring_ ; and it spurs Beth on somehow (god knows how) because then she's suddenly leaning in and closing her eyes.

Her lips press against Tara's, soft, barely a proper pucker, and they linger on the chapped but peachy flesh for just a couple of moments, before she pulls away just as quickly as she'd leaned in. Tara looks surprised again, but she's not horrified or completely repulsed by what Beth just did. She looks entranced, actually. Like what just happened between them—as awkward and random as it was—was something somewhere between confusing and fantastic. Beth just licks her lips and looks away, trying to ignore the sensation of the pressure she just felt on them.

They don't speak about it, and eventually the walkers clear so Daryl and Michonne come searching for them. They get up from where they're sat on the floor and follow them out.

.

.

The next time it happens, the situation is arguably less dire and lacking the risk of being discovered by walkers.

They're around the back of an old house the group is temporarily holed up in, filtering dirty water to clean from the stream just on the edge of the woods. The process is a little more time consuming than one can afford with flesh-eating monsters out to get you 24/7, but for the meantime it's quiet, and they've actually started _talking_. Properly too, not just meaningless small talk. They talk about things now. Important things. Deep things. And they know a few of these things about one another now.

Beth knows that Tara was at the prison battle on enemy lines, and Tara knows about how the farm barn burned and sent them running.

Beth knows Tara had a sister—Lilly—who loved The Governor and lost her daughter because she put her faith in a man who couldn't keep up his promise, even if he really wanted to that one time. Tara knows that the man whose neck he sliced with a sword was Beth's father, and that he, her mother, her brother, and everyone else she knew from before is dead. Beth knows Tara's father died soon into the apocalypse too, and Tara knows that Beth once tried to cut her wrist with a piece of broken mirror, but then decided then that she'd never wanted to live more fiercely.

They're not just strangers anymore, thrown together by fate or convenience.

They're friends.

…Except that _friends_ don't really do what they do next.

There's a pause like before, when they were alone trapped in the department store, and Tara stares at her all of a sudden. A deep stare, but one that's laced with inner conflict, like she's fighting a debate inside her head and trying to figure out what to do. Beth stares back, a clump of fringe falling in her face as she tilts her head, and Tara reaches out from where she's filtering her bottle and pushes the knotty blonde strands aside behind her ear. Her hand lingers, hovering just above her right cheek and thumb coming out to ghost her dirty face. Tara stares at her just as intently, gaze rapidly flickering down to her mouth then back up to her eyes, and Beth swallows thickly.

Tara leans in this time and kisses her, hand still resting lightly on Beth's cheek, and Beth smacks her lips against hers shakily, unsure exactly of when her shoulders began to quake.

There's more force this time, actual movement of their lips, and Beth brings her hand up to curl around Tara's wrist, still trembling. Tara's actions are more confident as she catches Beth's top lip and sucks on it, and Beth gasps, violently startled.

" _Stop_ ,"

Beth pulls away fast and plants her hands on Tara's shoulders, feeling tears stinging in her eyes, and she opens her mouth to say something else… but no words come out.

Tara blinks, eyelashes fluttering, and Beth's stomach summersaults.

"I—" she breathes, shakily, "I can't—I'm not…"

"What?"

Tara's voice is low and throaty, and it sends another shiver through Beth. She presses her lips into a hard line and bites her tongue, shaking her head helplessly. Blinking away the gathering wetness in her eyes, she removes her hands from her shoulders and sucks in a sharp muddled breath.

"I… You're _confusin'_ me."

Then she stands up and practically runs back into the house.

.

.

They don't talk for a while after that, but Beth senses Tara's eyes on her on more than one occasion, sharp and probing… trying to _understand_. Because she was giving off some extreme mixed signals, and Beth doesn't even know what she's doing _herself_. And it frightens her.

She's kissed a girl. More than once. And she thinks she really likes it. But that's frightening because she's not… She shouldn't…

She's not gay.

She doesn't have anything against that, but she's _not_. She spent her Sundays in church, yes—obviously she doesn't believe in the homophobic argument of anything but man and woman being unnatural—but just because she thinks she likes it doesn't mean she's like that _herself_ … Does it? She's heard of girls kissing their girl pals for fun before, just because they can, so maybe it's just that. Maybe it's as simple as that, and she's reading too far into it. Maybe…

Her head spins.

Maggie asks her what's wrong and she brushes it off, trying to hide the flush creeping up her neck when she spots Tara glancing over from across the room, and gives the excuse that she's tired. Maggie seems to sense that's not the entirety of it, but thankfully she leaves it and lets Beth sleep. They leave the house eventually and get back on the road, travelling north towards Noah's home in Virginia, but Beth still feels the weight of Tara's gaze on her back every step of the way.

Maybe she's just overthinking it.

.

.

Daryl's on watch one night, sat on a log by the edge of their makeshift camp in the woods, and Beth comes over to join him.

He doesn't say anything like Maggie did, but she knows he can tell that something's wrong, only he's staying quiet, just letting her sit with him in the dark. Her eyes are wobbling with tears, and she watches him light a cigarette and stick it between his lips to breathe it in, before pulling it back out with two fingers and releasing a steady puff of warm smoke.

He tilts his head and looks at her after that, holding the steaming cigarette in his hand and watching her with his narrow ice blue eyes.

A tear escapes from one of her eyes then and rolls down her cheek, and he reaches over with his free hand to wipe it away clumsily. His gaze is far less lusty and daring than Tara's, holding that silent familiarity she's grown to know from time alone in the wilderness with him, and his hand movements are awkward.

She scrunches up her nose to try hold in a sob she can feel rising, and he keeps his hand on her cheek, brushing away another tear that falls, and she leans into his large rough palm. Then she rises her arms and clamps them around him, pushing her face into his shoulder and breathing in his smell of earth and leather. He crushes the cigarette on the log and drops it so he can wind his arms around her waist and hold her. The tears are falling freely now, staining his jacket with dampness, and she whimpers. He rubs a hand in circular motions at the lower part of her back, and she presses her mouth against the fabric of his shoulder and squeezes her eyes shut.

_I don't know what to do._

Apparently she said it out loud because he holds her tighter, and whispers against the crown of her head.

"You will."

Perhaps in another world, this would be when she kisses him. Somewhere in another world, or another story, this would be the moment she pulls her face out of his shoulder and catches his chapped and thin lips with her own. But this isn't that story, and they aren't that Daryl and Beth.

She does pull back eventually, just enough to look at him, and he moves his hands from around her waist and plants them on either side of her head.

Again, in another world, he might hold her like that and lean in, but this isn't that one. He just angles her head downward slightly, and presses his lips to the flesh of her brow, leaving a soft, comforting kiss there on her forehead. She smiles then, despite her tears, and he does too, the hairs on his chin scraping her face lightly as he pulls back and rubs his thumb along her scarred cheekbone.

"Thank you," she whispers.

He shakes his head and replies gently: "Nah… Thank _you_."

"What for?"

He cocks his head sideward and his smile stretches a little.

"…Y'know."

She smiles wider into one of his palm and lets her eyes slide closed.

 _You know_.

 _Oh_.

.

.

A lot happens after that, and Beth never finds the right opportunity to do anything in regards with Tara.

Richmond is gone, overrun and a loss, and the discovery nearly crushes Noah.

A lot of things nearly happen. Stupid things. Like Tyreese nearly failing to notice the presence of a walker coming up behind him in Noah's home. Just like she nearly walked back up to Dawn with that pair of scissors and plunged them into her shoulder. The key word in both situations being _nearly_. They nearly ended up getting themselves _killed_ , but they haven't, and they're fine for the time being.

They find a man after that, or rather he finds _them_.

He says his name is Aaron and that he wants to take them back home to a place with walls. _Alexandria_ , he calls it. A community just south of D.C.

A _safe_ zone.

It sounds like a long shot, and Rick almost passes up the opportunity because of wariness, but he eventually decides to take a chance. The chance of actually getting to _live_ , instead of just surviving. It's a big chance, and Beth dwells upon it as she's stood outside the building they're holed up in before they depart for the supposed haven.

"Hey,"

She turns.

It's Tara.

She's wearing that creased punk shirt and worn checked over-shirt she always wears, and her hair has fallen out of the tie she usually has in it so it hangs by her ears in dark clumps. Her posture looks awkward, and she's wearing a thoughtful slight frown, clutching an assault rifle with both hands.

Beth lets her eyes drift to the sharp faded lettering of her shirt, and smiles.

"Hi."

Taking that as some kind of permission to move, she walks forward and stops just beside her, staring up at the sky. The stars are scattered out in handfuls and massive glittering clusters, and the light shines in reflection in Tara's eyes. Beth watches the reflected starlight in her brown irises and bites the inside of her cheek.

Before she can open her tongue-tied mouth to say anything, Tara beats her to it.

"Sorry about what happened by the stream," she says, eyes still pointed skyward, and Beth feels her pulse hasten.

"…You don't have to apologise."

"No. I do. I came off a little strong and I just thought… I misread you, okay? Because you were the one who kissed _me_ originally, I thought that… That _you_ … I got the wrong signal. And I'm sorry for that."

_That's not it._

" _I_ kissed _you_ though… You're right about that, and I don't know what… I don't know what to say, but you don't have to apologise. Really, Tara. You don't."

Tara smiles then, and pulls her gaze down from the sky and looks at her.

Beth's heart is still thumping away like a tambourine, and she can feel a flush rising in her cheeks that she prays Tara won't see in the dimness of the outside. The stars are bright, but hopefully not bright enough to illuminate the moderate blush tinting her cheeks.

"So do you think this talk about a safe place is legit?"

Her panic subsides slightly, and she finds herself _laughing_ faintly at Tara's question.

She blinks mid-laugh. "Uh… I don't know?"

"Me neither. It almost seems too good to be true with all he was saying, makes you a little suspicious after all we've been through. Especially if you'd been unlucky enough to have seen Terminus."

Of course. The _cannibals_. She was lucky to have dodged _that_ bullet.

Maybe there just aren't places like that anymore. Places to be safe, where children can play, families can have picnics, and mothers can have babies without perishing in childbirth. Maybe there just isn't a place for that anymore…

Maybe.

"What if this time it's the real deal?"

Tara eyes her with risen brows and surprise in her eyes. "Yeah?" she asks.

 _Maybe_.

"Yeah."

Tara's look of surprises turns into a smile, and she nods appreciatively.

"Yeah… That'd be nice."

Beth nods too.

_Gotta have a little faith, because without it…_

_What have we become?_

.

.

Turns out it is legitimate after all, and they finally have the chance to settle down again. Well, vaguely, because Beth doesn't think they'll ever _truly_ be able to settle again. Not really…

Not after what happened that day on the prison field.

But they're doing okay, and Beth's taken the habit of taking a walk around the lake at the heart of the safe zone.

It's a beautiful place, with beautiful homes and beautiful accessories, but the water in the lake is dirty and not as well maintained as it would have been before the turn. Beth comes to look at the water because it reminds her of what's out there, behind those giant steel walls around the town, that no amount of beautiful houses and master bedrooms will change. She stands by the water's edge and stares at the algae gathering on the still like a millpond surface, and sees tiny bluebottle flies and dragonflies fluttering around the chunks of garbage people have thrown in. It's several kinds of disgusting, but Beth doesn't ever wince at the grotesqueness of the landscape, though she absolutely would have before.

She spent the morning with Noah and Glenn, cleaning the weapons artillery and fixing up garbage bins with Maggie. She thinks now that Noah might have been flirting with her, but she was too occupied with other thoughts at the time to reciprocate or even notice. He's scheduled to go on a run later, for batteries and other equipment, and she told him to be careful, because if he's not he might go doing something stupid. Like what her and Tyreese _nearly_ did.

Tara's going too, and she promised to keep her eye on him, but then Beth realised she was alarmingly more worried about _her_ than she was about Noah and the others going.

 _Be careful!_ she called suddenly, before she left to go to Deanna's house, where the woman's waiting for her to conduct some kind of video interview. Or as Daryl so wonderfully put it: _'fuckin' stupid waste of time and recordin' equipment'_.

 _Be careful_.

Tara grinned when she said that and promised she would, but of course she had to throw in a flirty _'gorgeous'_ on the end of her reply. And the funnier thing is that Beth thinks she likes when she called her that.

.

.

It's a mess when they come back.

Aiden's dead, his body left behind and unrecoverable, and Noah nearly ended up that way too… All because of godforsaken _Nicholas_.

Tara slaps the shit out of him when Noah and Glenn explain what happened, that they got trapped in a set of revolving doors, with walkers chomping at them from behind the glass. That Glenn told them to hold the doors, but Nicholas chickened out and made a break through a gap in the doors, almost getting Noah grabbed by the walkers and eaten in the process.

 _Almost_.

"What the hell were you thinking!?" Tara yells in his face, attracting the attention of the whole town, "He could've _died_! You know that, right? He could've died all because you got a little scared and thought you'd run for it! Do you even care!?"

"It's okay—" Noah intervenes.

Tara pushes him back, "No, it's _not_. This asshole freaked and almost got you killed! If Eugene and I hadn't pulled up an' drawn the biters away with the horn, you _might've_ been! But he's just standing here like he's done nothing wrong!"

Beth puts a hand on Tara's arm and squeezes.

Tara glances at her, and Beth shakes her head.

 _It's not okay_.

If Daryl hadn't swiftly pulled out his gun and shot Dawn then whilst she was distracted with hugging Noah goodbye, something stupid might have happened. Someone might have _died_ , someone other than Dawn, and they avoided that.

But Beth doesn't want that to happen here, so she shakes her head again and Tara stops shouting, letting her pull her away and lead her back into the safe zone. Her hand shifts from Tara's arm down to her hand, and she clasps their fingers together and leads them to the centre of the town where the lake is.

Once they get there, Tara's calmed down a bit, but she's still reeling with rage and Beth can practically feel it steaming from her like smoke from a kettle.

"I should've killed that jerk," she says finally, hand still tight in Beth's and jaw set hard.

"No. That'd make you worse than him."

"He deserves it."

"No one deserves it, no matter what they've done. No one deserves to have their life taken away by a certain number of mistakes they made when they were scared. Who has the right to decide that? We can't just play God and not expect to be punished."

She thinks of the rage she felt when she found out Edwards had tricked her into killing his own foe, and how she stalked towards him with full intent of killing him too.

He did what he thought he had to do to survive, and she nearly acted impulsively and made a decision she knew she would've regretted later. Because if she'd killed him there, he wouldn't have been able to open his eyes and decide to help her get the medicine for Carol.

Killing someone for a mistake doesn't help them. Showing them the right path and encouraging them to follow it _does_. And you have to push aside that impulsive anger and not make that decision that saves no one.

Tara's anger subsides and she looks down at her feet. As she does, a clump of hair falls from behind her ear into her face, so Beth lifts the hand that's not intertwined in Tara's and pushes it back into place. Tara looks back up as she does, eyes growing a little wide because Beth doesn't make any attempt to pull her hand away even once she's pushed the hair back behind her ear. She keeps it holding her jaw and feels the locks of hair curling around her fingers, and stares at what her own hand is doing.

And before Beth knows what she's doing, she's leaning in and kissing her.

Tara doesn't mask her astonishment, but it doesn't discourage Beth. She pulls back momentarily, not daring to open her eyes in fear of what she might see within those warm brown suns, and just rakes her hand into Tara's hair and goes back in.

The shock that froze Tara before is gone and she's responding, placing a hand on Beth's cheek and kissing back. Their hands are still laced together at their hips and Beth squeezes her fingers, angling her head to harden her kisses and lap against Tara's mouth with her tongue, and doing this with her is so much different than it was with Jimmy and Zach. Because they were all roughness and hard lines, whereas Tara is soft and rosy. Her lips are lush and heart-shaped, and her jaw is smooth and rounded. Raven locks are still wound around the hand that's in her head and Beth tugs sharply, forcing a gasp from Tara as she attacks her lips more vigorously.

_I don't know what to do._

There's going to be marks from where Tara's nails are digging into the spaces between her fingers, but she doesn't care. She just kisses her like there's no tomorrow, because as far as they both know, there might _not_ be a tomorrow.

What happened today with Noah makes that abundantly clear, and Beth doesn't want to tip-toe around what frightens her anymore. She wants to live, and she's going to accept what she wants and what she is, and not let herself be afraid because being afraid makes you stupid, and _stupid_ is what gets you killed.

You can't run away from who you are.

You have to face it.

_You will._

…And she does.


End file.
